Gas turbines operate at high temperatures and high rotational speeds that can cause certain hardware components to fail. Among hardware components that may fail are, for example, airslots, inner tangs, combustor liners, and lockwires.
Many gas turbine hardware components' actual useful service lives are highly variable, and many such hardware components can be relatively expensive to replace. Consequently, some existing solutions aim to predict the remaining service life of a specific hardware component. Physical methods of determining a hardware component's remaining service life may involve taking the gas turbine out of service for physical inspection and testing. Based on the design of the component and the stresses it experiences under specified operating conditions, it is possible to predict the component's remaining service life from its physical condition with some accuracy. However, having a gas turbine out of service is expensive, and many repairs to gas turbines may require hours or days to return from an out-of-service state to a service-ready state.
Statistical methods of determining a hardware component's remaining service life may employ historical data about the service life of reference hardware components in the same gas turbine and in other gas turbines of the same design and similar designs. Such methods can be inaccurate because the variability in a hardware component's service life makes it difficult to accurately predict the hardware component's remaining service life. Consequently the hardware component must be replaced conservatively to avoid a significant risk of in-service failure. In some cases the hardware component may be replaced prematurely, that is, when it had a substantial remaining service life. Such premature replacement of a hardware component can be relatively expensive both because the component itself may be expensive, and because replacement may require taking the gas turbine out of service prematurely.